gold and silver is at present due solely to their conventional use as money. These metals are endowed with such singularly useful properties that, if we could only get them in sufficient abundance, they would supplant all the other metals in the manufacture of household utensils, ornaments, fittings of all kinds, and an infinite multitude of small articles, which are now made of brass, copper, bronze, pewter, German silver, or other inferior metals and alloys. Moreover, the beautiful lustre of gold and silver must have excited admiration among all peoples at all times.

b) Portability. The material of money must not only be valuable, but the value must be so related to the weight and bulk of the material that the money shall not be inconveniently heavy on the one hand, nor inconveniently minute on the other. Iron money could not be used in cash payments at the present day, since a penny would weigh about a pound, and instead of a five-pound note, we should have to deliver a ton of iron. During the last century copper was actually used as the chief medium of exchange in Sweden; and merchants had to take a wheelbarrow with them when they went to receive payments in copper dalers.

The portability of money is an important quality, not merely because it enables the owner to carry small sums in the pocket without trouble, but because large sums can be transferred from place to place, or from continent to continent, at little cost. The cost of conveying gold or silver from London to Paris, including insurance, is only about four-tenths of 1 per cent; and between the most distant parts of the world it does not exceed from 2 to 3 per cent.

c) Indestructibility. If it is to be passed about in trade, and kept in reserve, money must not be subject to easy deterioration or loss. It must not evaporate like alcohol, nor putrefy like animal substances, nor decay like wood, nor rust like iron.

d) Homogeneity. All portions of specimens of the substance used as money should be homogeneous, that is, of the same quality, so that equal weights will have exactly the same value. In order that we may correctly count in terms of any unit, the units must be equal and similar, so that twice two will always make four. If we were to count in precious stones, it would seldom happen that four stones would be just twice as valuable as two stones.

e) Divisibility.-Closely connected with the last property is that of divisibility. Every material is, indeed, mechanically divisible, almost without limit. The hardest gems can be broken, and steel

can be cut by harder steel. But the material of money should be not merely capable of division, but the aggregate value of the mass after division should be almost exactly the same as before division.

f) Stability of value. It is evidently desirable that the currency should not be subject to fluctuations of value. This would be a matter of comparatively minor importance were money used only as a measure of values at any one moment, and as a medium of exchange. If all prices were altered in like proportion as soon as money varied in value, no one would lose or gain, except as regards the coin which he happened to have in his pocket, safe, or bank balance. But practically speaking, people do employ money as a standard of value for long contracts, and they often maintain payments at the same variable rate, by custom or law, even when the real value of the payment is much altered. Hence every change in the value of money does some injury to society.

g) Cognizability.-By this name we may denote the capability of a substance to be easily recognized and distinguished from all other substances. As a medium of exchange, money has to be continually handed about, and it will occasion great trouble if every person receiving currency has to scrutinize, weigh, and test it. If it requires any skill to discriminate good money from bad, poor ignorant people are sure to be imposed upon.

Under cognizability we may properly include what has been aptly called impressibility, namely, the capability of a substance to receive such an impression, seal, or design as shall establish its character as current money of certain value. We might more simply say that the material of money should be coinable.

37. PRIMITIVE SYSTEMS OF CURRENCY'

BY WILLIAM RIDGEWAY

When in a certain community one particular kind of commodity is of general use and generally available, this comes to form the unit in terms of which all values are expressed. The nature of this barterunit will depend upon the nature of the climate and geographical position, and likewise upon the stage of culture to which the people have attained.

In the hunting stage, all the property of each individual consists in his weapons and implements of war and the chase, and the skins of 'Adapted from Origin of Currency and Weight Standards, pp. 11-30. (Cambridge University Press, 1892.)

wild beasts which form his clothing, and sometimes the cover of his hut or wigwam.

At a later stage, when he has succeeded in taming the ox, the sheep or the goat, or the horse, he is the owner of property in domestic animals, whose flesh and milk sustain him and his family, and whose skins and wool provide his clothing. By this time too he has found out that it is better to make the captive whom he has taken in war into a hewer of wood and drawer of water than merely to obtain some transient pleasure from eating him after putting him to death by torture, or by wearing his skull or scalp as personal decorations. This is now the pastoral or nomad stage.

Next comes the more settled form of life, when the cultivation of land and the production of the various kinds of cereals render a permanent dwelling-place more or less necessary. Property now consists, not merely in slaves and domestic animals, but likewise in houses of improved construction, and large stores of grain. Man now possesses certain of the metals, gold and copper being the first to be known. How does he appraise these metals when he exchanges them with his neighbor? We shall find that he estimates them in terms of cattle, and that he at first barters them all by measures based on the parts of the human body, a method which continues to be employed for copper and iron long after the art of weighing has been invented; next he estimates his gold by certain natural units of capacity such as a goosequill, and finally fixes the amount of gold which is equivalent to a cow by setting it in a rude balance against a certain number of natural seeds of plants.

Such is the process which history tells us has taken place in the temperate regions of Asia and Europe, Africa and America. The development varies greatly, however, with the differing conditions of life in different regions. In Arctic regions we find the skins of certain animals serving as units of account, in spite of the difference in value between those of different quality and rarity. In the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, even after the use of coined money had been introduced among the Indians, the skin was still in common use as the money of account. A gun nominally worth forty shillings brought twenty "skins." (This term is the old one used by the Company.) One skin (beaver) is supposed to be worth two shillings, and it represents two marten, and so on. "You heard a great deal about skins at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also charged for clothing, etc., in this way." Similarly in the extreme north of Asia we find some

Ostiak tribes using the skin of the Siberian squirrel as their unit of account. Among the Haidas and all along the coast the blanket now takes the place of the beaver-skin currency of the interior of British Columbia and of the Northwest Territory. The blankets used in trade are distinguished by the points or marks on the edge, woven into their texture, the best being four-point, the smallest and poorest one-point. The acknowledged unit of trade is a single twoand-a-half-point blanket, now worth a little over $1.50. Everything is referred to this unit, even a large four-point blanket is said to be worth so many blankets. There is also the "Copper," "an article of purely conventional value and serving as money. This is a piece of native metal beaten out into a flat sheet and made to take a peculiar shape. These are not made by the Haidas-nor, indeed, is the native metal known to exist in the islands-but are imported as articles of great worth from the Chilcat country north of Sitka. Much attention is paid to the size and make of the copper, which should be of uniform but not too great thickness, and should give forth a good sound when struck with the hand. At the present time spurious coppers have come into circulation, and although these are easily detected by an expert, the value of the copper is somewhat reduced and is often more nominal than real. Formerly ten slaves were paid for a good copper as a usual price, now they are valued at from forty to eighty blankets." It is obvious that such costly imported articles, though now used as occasional higher units of account-much as we employ fifty-pound notes-must have had some definite use, owing to which they were so highly prized. The attention paid to their tone would lead us to conjecture that they were employed as a kind of gong, and further on we shall find certain peoples of Further Asia paying a large price in buffaloes for gongs.

When we turn to the torrid zone, where clothes are only an incumbrance and nature lavishly supplies plenteous stores of fruits and vegetables, the chief objects of desire will not be food and clothing, but ornaments, implements, and weapons. Hence we find amongst the inhabitants of such regions in especial strength that passion for personal adornment, which is one of the most powerful and primitive instincts of the human race. Shells have from very remote times formed one of the most simple forms of adornment in all parts of the world. Shells which once perhaps formed the necklace of some beauty of the neolithic age are found with the remains of the cave men of Auvergne. Strings of cowries under their various names of

changos, zimbis, bonges, or porcelain shells are both durable, universally esteemed, and portable, and therefore suited to form a medium of exchange, and as such they are employed in the East Indies, Siam, and on the whole East and West coasts of Africa, while on the tropical coasts they serve the purposes of small change, being collected on the shores of the maldive and Laccadive islands and exported for that object. The relative value varies slightly according to their abundance or scarcity. In India the usual ratio was about 5,000 to the rupee. Marco Polo found the cowry in use in the province of Yunnam. He says, "In Carajan gold is so abundant that they give one Saggio of gold for six of the same weight of silver. And for small change they use the porcelain shell. These are not found in the country but are brought from India." How ancient is their use in Asia is shown by the fact that Layard found cowries in the ruins of Nineveh.

In Queen Charlotte Islands the dentalium shell was recognized as a medium of exchange by most of the coast tribes, but not so much as a medium of exchange for themselves as for barter with the Indians of the interior.

Passing to the islands of the Pacific we shall find shell money playing an important part among the primitive peoples, such as those who inhabit New Ireland, New Britain, the Pelew, and the Caroline groups. It will suffice for our purpose to describe the form in which it is employed in New Britain. Mr. Powell tells us that the native money in New Britain consists of small cowry shells strung on strips of cane. (In Duke of York Island it is called Dewarra.) It is measured in lengths, the first length being from hand to hand across the chest with arms extended, second length from the center of the breast to the hand of one arm extended, the third from the shoulder to the tip of the fingers along the arm, fourth from the elbow to the tip of the fingers, fifth from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, sixth finger lengths. Fish are generally bought by the length in Dewarra unless they are too small. A large pig will cost from 30 to 40 lengths of the first measure (fathom) and a small one 10 lengths. The Dewarra is made up for convenience in coils of 100 fathoms or first lengths; sometimes as many as 600 fathoms are coiled together, but not often, as it would be too bulky to remove quickly in case of invasion or war, when the women carry it away to hide. These coils are very neatly covered with wickerwork like the bottoms of our cane chairs.